CAGW Unveils FY 2009 Earmark Request Database

Business Wire, June 23, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), in conjunction with the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), today announced a campaign to determine which members of Congress are truly committed to making this year's appropriations process as transparent as possible by allowing their constituents and all taxpayers to view their earmark requests.

CAGW will post on its website a database of which members of Congress have agreed to release their FY 2009 earmark request lists for the Appropriations bills, along with links to the list of requests, as well as the names of members who have not released such lists.

Forty-six taxpayer-friendly members of Congress have stated that they will request no earmarks this year, while 46 others have already posted lists on their member websites. Over the course of the summer, CAGW staff and members, Sunlight, and TCS will be calling the offices of the rest of the members to ask that their earmark requests be made public.

CAGW first undertook this project in 2007. Overall, 13 members did not request any earmarks, 75 released their requests, and the rest refused or did not respond.

Even though modest progress has been made in the drive to compel increased levels of earmark accountability from Congress, the scandal of congressional earmarking continues to figure prominently in the media and beleaguer unreformed pork-barreling members of Congress. In order to encourage more members to break the earmark habit, the first plank of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) 10-point Earmark Reform Pledge commits lawmakers to "fully disclose all earmarked funding or targeted tax benefit requests (or substitute letters to agencies) on my Congressional website." The pledge encourages lawmakers to commit to providing taxpayers with greater transparency and accountability for earmarks.

"Those members who have refused to request earmarks deserve the gratitude of the American taxpayer," said CAGW President Tom Schatz. "They are part of a growing shift in national attitudes about congressional spending. The data provided by CAGW and our partners TCS and The Sunlight Foundation is a valuable transparency tool for taxpayers, and we hope they'll visit these websites daily as the process unfolds. We intend to keep the pressure on to persuade more members to voluntarily shed light on the spending process." CAGW's database can be viewed at www.cagw.org, the Sunlight Foundation is at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com and TCS is at www.taxpayer.net.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.